International Involvement

How Can You Be Involved?

We believe that the hands and feet of peacemaker ministries around the world are not in our home offices; they are a part of committed Christians around the world who teach and practice peacemaking as part of their ongoing ministries. Here are a few ideas of ways that you can be involved as a crucial part of our mission:

If you are a pastor or church leader in another country, consider how you might begin teaching peacemaking and encouraging your congregation to live out peacemaking as part of their everyday lives. Our website has a section of ideas and resources dedicated to this topic. You may encounter a number of cultural obstacles, and we invite you to share your challenges with us so that we might explore possible solutions with you or connect you to others who are facing similar challenges.

If you are a missionary or cross-cultural worker, there are a number of ways that you can integrate peacemaking into your ministry. You have a wonderful opportunity to teach and practice peacemaking within your own team as part of your member care; we have discovered that a great deal of conflict arises on the mission field and that the effectiveness and witness of a team is greatly enhanced when they determine to address their conflicts proactively in a God-honoring way. Cross-cultural workers are also often on the front lines of where the body of Christ is growing around the world; peacemaking can play a role in your evangelism and witness, discipleship and leadership training. You have a great opportunity to impact the future leaders of the global church!

If you are from the United States and have a passion for spreading peacemaking globally, consider ways to encourage your church missions outreach to include a peacemaking emphasis in their evangelism, leadership training and support for missionaries. Encourage your short-term mission teams to study peacemaking for themselves and to consider ways that they can share peacemaking principles with their hosts. You might consider if you have opportunities to build long-term relationships with partners in other countries for the purpose of building a culture of peace in and through the partner’s ministry. At Peacemaker Ministries, one of our international goals is to “decentralize” the teaching of peacemaking so that likeminded people all around the world are creating and sustaining partnerships in areas where we could never have the expertise or the relationships that are already established through missionaries and other church partnerships.

Here are some other ideas for ways to support the advance of biblical peacemaking around the world:

Sponsor the participation of a missionary, other cross-cultural worker or international in Conflict Coaching & Mediation training, or in our annual Peacemaker Conference. This will give them the opportunity to learn to apply biblical peacemaking principles and to meet, network with and be encouraged by other peacemakers. Many missionaries or cross-cultural workers welcome the opportunity to gain further education while they are on home assignment, and it is much more cost-effective to send them to training while they are already in the United States.

If you live outside of the United States and you plan to attend our training or our annual Peacemaker Conference, please be in touch with us before you come. We would love to hear about what you hope to receive from the training and brainstorm with you how we can help you make the most of your time and expense.

If you have expertise in translation work or you know people who do, find an article on our website that has impacted you and translate it into another language. Many people around the world are hungry for solid biblical resources in their own languages, and a few moments’ work by a translator can bless hundreds or even thousands of people with the chance to grow through this biblical teaching.

Do you travel out of the country for work or leisure? Consider bringing some of our printed resources with you to leave with local church leaders or missionaries. As shipping costs rise, it is increasingly difficult to distribute translated materials to people who need them. If you are traveling out of the country, consider seeing if our bookstore sells resources in that country’s language and exploring if your church, denomination or other Christian groups have partners there who could benefit from you acting as a “courier” for peacemaking resources.

Support our International Ministry financially. While we try to keep costs as low as possible through creative resourcing and developing local partnerships, the fact is that most of our ministry partners around the world cannot afford travel to attend our training, the high cost of shipping resources to them or our costs when we come visit them. Financial support from generous people around the world goes a long way toward advancing our global mission.

If you are a Christian lawyer in a country outside the United States, consider connecting with a local group of Advocates International. Christian lawyers and Peacemaker Ministries have a great deal of mutual interest, and Advocates International has established a Global Taskforce for Peacebuilding, for which Chip Zimmer is an advisor. We also have a number of articles on our website that are written for thelegal community. Although some of the articles may address specific topics that are not relevant outside of the United States, many will contain helpful ideas for incorporating biblical peacemaking into your work as a lawyer.